Oh wow it's busy!

It's been uber busy these last few weeks. I am happy to report the race went pretty good. It took me about 30 mins longer than planned however I did it that's what matters. There were some nasty hills that I did not train for. I'm training for them now. :D

Also a couple of weeks ago I started teaching community card classes at the local college. :D I have 4 students and having a great time with it. Three hours of card making for 4 Saturday's. To make things even more exciting I've been asked to teach classes at to different churches. 4 classes in 1 week. CRAZY!!

I'm way behind on posting photos, please forgive me. These are from my last class at the college. The focus was on die cutting, embossing and alcohol inks.

We also inked up a Christmas ornament unfortunately I didn't get pics of that. I'll do my best to upload pics of everything quickly. 

I hope all is well with you,

Katie

Spooky!

What is super spooky is how fast time fly's these days. It's been a month and I promised I wouldn't do that to ya. Thankfully I've gotten back into the crafting habit again I'm very happy about that. My crafting world is still kinda in an uproar though. I've moved crafting areas and half the stuff  is still downstairs and I have no shelves in the up stairs. It's chaos. :D Hopefully this weekend that will change, I'm planning on going to Home Depot for shelves.  I have managed to craft a number of cards recently and have a banner planned for this weekend. 

I made this Halloween card for ya: 

I don't know what it is about Halloween I just love decorating for it. Not that I've put up any decorations yet but it's on the agenda. There are 2 stamps used in this card. Lawn Fawn's Happy Haunting for the ghosts and everything else is a stamp I can't remember the name of. I can say I cut it apart. I'll have to make another card and take pic's of the stamp and write down the name for you.  

In personal news. I've lost 35 lbs.. a total of 26 inches! Very exciting. My run is a week from tomorrow and last week I ran 3 miles in 30 mins. :D Happy Days! 

Katie

The Sabbatical is over

Hello!

I'm sorry I needed a break, that's over now and I'm back. I'd love to say I'll be posting every day but I can't guarantee that. I do promise to post a lot more often. :D  I've begun card making again. I was worried I was leaving the hobby behind like all the others however that's not true and that makes me happy.

For a quick card and some coloring ideas you can check out the post I did for today's Stamp Fever's blog:

Design Team Wednesday with Katie

Check that out and leave a comment if you would be so kind. :D

In personal news I'm down 29 lbs! It a slow process however I feel so much better and am so much stronger.

I'll be back tomorrow with photos of my class I'm teaching this Saturday.

I hope all is well with you guys and that you had a great summer!

Katie

Your awesome!

This one is for you! I've been seriously AWOL lately. I'm back now and itching to craft my heart out. :D I made this not to long ago and I want to dedicate it to you since you are still here with me.

I was inspired by one of Danielle Walls card. I adored how she did those flowers so I did the same thing. 

Life is good here. I'm happy to say I've lost 5 inches! I've really toned up. Last week I got sick so I wasn't able to workout that much but I'm feeling better. :D 

Nancy did a great post over at the Stamp Fever Blog. She showed a great way on how to use your punches.  Very cool. Click here to check it out. I plan on making a card for the post I encourage all of  you to do the same.  

Be back soon promise! 

It's on like Donkey Kong!

Finally the crafting bug has returned. I think I took in so much information over the last year my brain just needed a break. I was supposed to teach this weekend but my good friend Gina asked to switch so I'm teaching this coming Saturday. Here are the 3 samples: 

A window card with some masking

A fun travel card for either boy or girl:

and a masculine card. I used a fathers day sentiment but you could use anything. 

If your in the area (Orange, Ca) come on down! I'll have all the supplies as well as some treats even sugar free for those who are watching their sugar intake. 

Thanks for putting up with my break, I'm excited to get crafting. 

Katie

Hello my name is Katie, and I'm a gamer.

So I've been awol lately. I normally would post but I didn't want to admit it to ya'll but I'm a gamer. I've not played video games in awhile mostly because there are so many other things to do and they can be what I call a time suck. However the sequel to the greatest game ever (Diablo 2) came out last week. It's been 12 years since D2 came out. Diablo 3 was announced 4 ish years ago and we've been chomping at the bit ever since.

Yes, we were those really nerdy people who were in line at GameStop at midnight to get our copy and yes I was the only girl gamer there. (Thankfully Jenn my brother in law's girlfriend came so I wasn't the only girl)  It's been awesome to play again. Although I have to say I'm slightly disappointed with Blizzard (the manufacturer) You see they are the only company that will take as long as it needs to make the game perfect, by that I mean free from glitches and bugs. (bugs are when something doesn't work right with software) Diablo 3 is awesome however I've found a number of minor issues with it and that's slightly disappointing. I hope this isn't a sign Blizzard is starting to slack off. That would be quite the disservice to the gaming world.

Here's a trailer if your interested:

I promise to have more crafting stuff up soon. :D  A few days ago I forced myself to create a new rule. No gaming until at least one card has been created. I have a pile of cards to share. Now I just need to create the no gaming until the cards have been photographed rule. :D

My First Video!

Hello! Woot! Two posts to days in a row!

Last week I quickly mentioned that I made a video for Stamp Fever's blog. I adore glossy accents (even though it comes in a plastic bottle) but I hated how it would clog up all the time. I was constantly unplugging it. I even broke the nozzle on my last bottle. :(  I finally figured out how to keep it from clogging and realized after chatting with the owner of a local stamp company that I had to make a video. Here it is.

As Dk has a degree in photography the lighting and a number of other things will improve for the next video. (He was not happy with this one) Now to figure out what that next one will be. :D

Happy Thursday.

Bag It

I'll be honest the crafting break has been nice. I have a tendency to be an all or nothing person and this training stuff is taking a lot of my focus. I'm down 10 lbs! I have some Mother's day cards to make so I'll be back to crafting soon.  A little over a week ago Dk and I were flipping through the channels and came across the following documentary on plastic bags. Here's the trailer:

It's on Netflix if you have an account. It was an eye opener. We've made some changes so we're not using as much plastic.

We purchased these reusable produce bags and are sure to bring our tote bags along where ever we shop not just the market. I also got this water bottle. I got it at Whole Foods, Dk started working there (again) a couple weeks ago and next week he starts going full time. I am very happy we get a discount. I've made some other changes but I don't want to go to "hippy" on you :D.

I just wanted to share, take from it what you want. I hope all is well with you where ever you are.

Katie

That life stuff

Woot! My video has gone up today on the Stamp Fever blog. Very exciting. You can check out the video by clicking here. It's a tip I have for keeping your glossy accents from drying closed. It was fun to make.  The lighting isn't the best but it's what I have in my craft area. :D

I've been busy with life and haven't sat down to craft. Getting ready for the gym then joining has been lots of fun and time consuming. By getting ready I mean proper undergarments, (which I haven't found the perfect sports bra yet, at least I have one) and most importantly shoes. After a couple of stores I found some great fun colored training shoes:

If your feet are not well taken care of everything will fall apart. I spent some money on these however they will last a while. It was like running on air, amazing what proper support does for ya.

Today is my first day with the trainer. Let's hope I can find time to craft afterwards. :D

Happy Day to ya!

Katie

Running on Empty

Today's post has nothing to do with cards.

I've always been on the more fluffier side, genetics I suppose. My health is pretty good but it's not gonna stay that way unless I start taking better care of myself. Plus being healthier may help with the fertilization process. It will certainly help with shopping for cuter cloths. :D

Last month a friend of mine announced on Facebook that she signed up for a 5k. It looks like a ton of fun and is far enough away I have plenty of time to train. What is it you ask?

It's a 5k obstacle course invested with zombies. Yes zombies. (Not real ones they are folks dressed up in costumes.)

Here's a video:

I have 6 months to train which will be good, I don't want to injure myself. Here is the official website: http://runforyourlives.com/  Two days ago I signed up, and am very excited.

I'll keep you posted with how things go. I am happy to say I've lost 6 lbs so far and that's just been with watching what I eat these last few weeks. :D

Thanks for your encouragement and support.

Katie

A Quicky

A quick post today. Hero Arts has their monthly challenge I had been struggling with coming up with an idea of sunshine, well a new one. There have been some fantastic idea's done already and I was stumped. I ended up looking at some of the entries and I was inspired to use one of the sketches:

I'm very happy with how it turned out. It's all Hero Arts stuff with the exception of the twin that's Lawn Fawn. Now to get back to designing cards for my next class. 

Katie 

Lawnscaping Challenge #32

One of the reasons I love Lawn Fawn is the abilities to make scenes. I just had to participate in the current challenge:

As it was my good friend Sarah's birthday and we had just gone whale watching.  I had to use Critters in the sea. We were able to see 5 California gray whales. We even had the privilege of watching whales wave so the sentiment was perfect.

I used tumbled glass and broken china for the sky. The water was done with alcohol inks on glossy paper, sail boat blue and stream. I made the white part of the waves with a white gel pen and copic colored the whale. C2, C4, C6. The clouds are from Bon Voyage.

So cute and she loved it. In other news I made a YouTube video. lol it cracks me up. I'll be posting that here sometime the first week of May. Have a great week!

Katie

My Recent Class

A quick post today. I didn't have chance to post about my class which was last weekend. I had a decent turn out :D  These are the three cards we created:

We used watercolor pencils, which was fun. Very time consuming but fun. Next time I'll blog about my next class before the class is scheduled. :D 

Have a great weekend,

Katie

A two fer

There are two challenges I wanted to do this week and thankfully I could combine them. First up was the colors from this weeks CAS-ual Friday's blog This week's challenge:

Opposites on the color wheel. Fun..

Then I had to participate in the new blog, A blog named hero. I missed their first one :( but I couldn't let that happen again.  Their current challenge is:

I've been wanting to a window for while now. Here's my creation:

A side view:

It's all Hero Arts stuff... well for the most part. 

The card is Hero as is the cloud stamp, sentiment, flourish, pearls and butterfly. Inks I used a couple of memento. The butterfly was colored with Copics. I can get you all the numbers and color names if you want. 

It's a busy week time to get back to that life stuff. 

Katie

A Case of the Monday's

It's Monday, wow I didn't post since Wed? How did that happen? Oh wait that life stuff got in the way. Busy weekend. Car battery died, hung out with mom, and hand my second card class! :D I'll post those pics tomorrow. Today is a day of good news bad news.

Bad news first (it's nicer to end on a high note) One of the three winners didn't contact me :(  Which brings me to the good news..

I'm gonna draw a new winner! Here goes...

#35 Kara Lynne come on down!

Ok I will contact Kara best way I can, as I did the other three ladies.

Arrg if only this Case of the Monday's would go away. 

Katie

Pretty Flowers

Made this card for my Sister in law. She's a constant customer and needed more birthday cards. :D I actually had made this as a thank you card originally however I quickly turned it into a birthday card with the added punched out pattern paper.

The pattern paper is Salt Air by Cosmo Cricket. The flowers are Hero Arts colored with distress inks and the leaves are a Martha Stewart punch. The background stamp is also Hero Arts, flower dot pattern I believe.

Quick card with an equally quick post. :D

Hope your hump day is going well.

Katie

~ FYI ~Two of the three winners have contacted me and their chosen sets are in the mail. If the third doesn't contact me by Sunday night I'll chose another winner on Monday.

We have some winners!

Wow a 188 comments and I more than doubled my followers! Thank you all so much. I had no idea I'd have this much positive feed back. It's been a great week.

Last week I said I would give 1 stamp away. Well after some discussion with the hubby we've decided to give 3 away! 1 because I said I would. A second because of the exceptional turn out. The 3rd... well I had planned on doing a give away all along when I hit 100 followers. Which I hit :D Plus 1 out of 188 isn't as much fun for you. Now 3 out of 188 you have much better chances.

These draws are truly random... here goes.

1st one goes to:

#74 - Disp6194Apr 1, 2012 09:31 PM

Katie your card is so cute! I love those polka dot clouds, how fun :)

2nd one goes to:

#8 (my lucky number) CaitApr 1, 2012 07:24 AM

This is sooooo cute...thanks for sharing it with us!

The final one goes to:

#152 GrammySue's CreationsApr 4, 2012 04:42 PM

this is too cute--love the frog.

I have done my best to contact the winners you guys have a week to contact me otherwise I'll have to choose another winner.

Again thank you all. Those who know me know I would give you all a gift if I could however I can't afford that. sorry.

Have a great week!

Katie

Happy Birthday Dk!

I'm sure it's Sunday already for most of you as it's late here on the west coast. It's still Saturday for me.  Today was a busy day. My hubby turned 36 :D Happy birthday to him. here's the card I made for him:

Just kidding. Dk is very boy, he could care less about cards and made it clear I didn't need to make him one. I made this card for my sister in law to give out. It's cute. A woman at Church had the cutest skirt on. Her skirt was white with two different patterns on it similar to that fabulous flourish stamp. I nonchalantly took a photo of it and made this creation. I seemed to have deleted the photo. Hopefully she will ware it again soon. I'll take another pic for you. 

Tomorrow (Sunday) is the last day to enter into both my drawing as well as the Lily Pad drawing. I've had a huge response. I wish everyone who commented could win. My drawing ends at 12:00am pacific standard time.  I'll draw the name and post sometime late Monday morning. (PST)

I'd like to wish everyone a Happy Easter and/or a wonderful Sunday.

Katie

Coloring Gone Wild!

Lily Pad Birthday Blog hop can be found here. Only a couple days left, comment while you can! 

I haven't entered in any contests in awhile. I just needed a break. This week's Lawnscaping challenge got me all excited and the gears started turning on the thoughts of: 

Plus on Wednesday Simon Says Stamp announced their current challenge is to use your favorite tool. I went in circles... do markers count as tools? After a small discussion with the hubby I pulled out the dictionary. To my joy I read this.  

Tool: Noun 5. anything used as a means of accomplishing a task or purpose. 

My Copic's helped me accomplish my coloring task therefor they are tools. :D and I'll also be entering this into the Simon Says Stamp challenge. I pulled out all my Lawn Fawn sets, well not all I went to grab a couple and wouldn't you know it the Store asked to borrow them. 

Here's my creation: 

What I used:

InLinkz.com

Critters in the burbs has flowers however I had no interest in cutting those out, I don't have that much patience. It was a lot of cutting. I outlined everything with the memento marker, it hides all my cutting mistakes. I highly recommend it.

Paper and copic's that's it. And I have all the numbers for you :D On a side note, Dk saw the background and said "Bob Ross would say your background needs more contrast" That was after I adhered everything down. Next time I'll add more contrast, if that's what Bob Ross suggests.

Ok here goes:

Blue background: Air brushed with B2 and B4
Grass area: Air brushed with YG17, (afterwards I used YG17 to make grass around the tree trunk)
Tree Top: G02, G05, G07, G09
Tree Trunk: E13, E17, E15, E19, E37, E47, E79 (you don't need that many I just kept playing with it)
Acorns: E11, E13, E15, E17 (that last one was just a tiny line in the shadow)
Butterfly Y15, Y17, Y38 the body was N2, N3, N4, N5, N7 (You really only need N3, N5, N7)
Bunny: W0, W1, W2, R20, R22 for the nose.
Snail: W3, W4 Shell was E7, E8, E9, 0
Flowers: R27, G09 (I stamp the leaf piece on the green grass piece and just colored it with a darker green)
Clouds: B000, and 0 (color the whole thing first then use 0 in places for the texture, B0000 would be better, note to self buy that one :D )
Spica's were used on the butterfly and flowers, they don't really show up in this pic.

I used way to many on a few items. Basically I start off really light and add colors until I like the shades. You can always add colors is my thinking.

That's my coloring. I have come along ways but I have a long ways to go. I really need to find a more advanced coloring class.

Crossing my fingers, lets see if this card's a winner!

Katie

Presents for All

Snap!! I've doubled my followers. Wow. Thank you Lily Pad and to each and every one of you! If your looking for Lily Pad's 1st birthday hop click here. You have a few more days to enter in for my drawing as well as the Lily Pad drawings. 

As it's still the big birthday week I decided to sport another birthday card. I love how this came out. It's my two favorite stamp company's:  

What I used:

InLinkz.com

I didn't write down the Copic #'s I used. (it's not the first time I've done this and as you'll soon learn it won't be the last) Off the top of my head I know I used R20, R22, R24, R27 (my fav red's) Yellow's: was Y02, Y04, Y08, Y35, Y38 Blue: B00, B02, B04 (my fav blues) For the Orange I used YR04 and YR07 along with a couple others. I don't remember which BV I used I'll look it up if you want me to. As I've said before use the colors you have/like.

Katie

Beef Tongue?!

O wow.. is all I can say. I've nearly doubled my followers thank you so much!

The Lily Pad birthday hop can be found here. (Don't forget to comment on that post to enter to win a stamp set)

I made this card for my Sister in law to give to her brother, my brother in law. He received a smoker for Christmas some years ago and adores smoking all kinds of stuff so she asked me to make a card with a smoking theme. I don't own any sort of stamps like that and I was swamped with a million other things so I through this card together: 

Sorry about the photo I had to take a pic and run. I did the same style for another card sometime ago, you can check that card out here. I thought the beef tongue recipe paper was a nice touch. (No, he has not smoked beef tongue)

Where did I get that paper? It's from a 1950's cookbook my grandmother gave me 20+ years ago. I'll never use it as a cookbook, for a number of reasons. 1. I don't cook because my husband is an awesome chef. B. Since then, the internet was invented and one can find anything on the internet. III. We have quite the library of cookbooks since DK's 2nd love is cooking.  Check a local used book store they will have all sorts of old books you could use in new ways. :D

The fire balls are from Lawn Fawn's Cozy Christmas stamp set. (Lawn Fawn is my all time favorite stamp company) The fireball paper is from Cosmo's Crickets Salt Air line.

I burned the edges (I did this over the kitchen sick, that paper caught on fire quick) It was looking a bit plain so I added the mmm... by hand in each corner.

Simon Says Stamps challenge this week is anything goes. They choose their winners by random draw. As 1000+ people have entered I don't expect to win but it's worth a shot.

You should give it a try if you haven't already, you have 12 hours to do so. :D

Katie

It's a party!

Hello and Welcome to.....

I am very honored to be one of those asked to be part of the Lily pad birthday party blog hop! So exciting. 

You should have hopped in by way of, the very creative, Virginia. To hop over to the beginning and join in the fun click here. 

The details of the hop:

There are three prize packages with a total retail value of over $300! These prizes will be awarded by random draw. There are two ways to be eligible for the prize drawings. You can “like” us on Facebook , but if you do not have a Facebook account, you can also be eligible for the drawings by leaving a comment on the Lily Pad Cards blog. To better your chances even more, leave comments on the other blogs participating in the hop. For each comment you leave, you'll get your name entered again! (but only one comment per blog, please.) You have one week (Sunday April 8th) to post comments to win the awesome prizes.

Enough with the details lets get to the fun stuff.... Just for you Lily Pad!!

Here's everything I used... well everything I can remember:

InLinkz.com

The polka dot and blue paper were from the stash not to sure where they came from. The water was done with alcohol inks (sail boat blue and stream). I stamped them on the glossy paper. To make the water edge I punched out a scallop edge on scratch paper and traced it on the back of the stamped glossy paper then cut it out by hand. Easy peasy. 

Next on your journey is the, also extremely talented...{How did I manage to get sandwiched between to awesome folks?} Ashley. 

Have a hopping good time!

Those of you still here....What's a birthday party without presents?! I will give away one (1) stamp set of your choice from the Stamps of Life. (They are some of the best clear stamps on the market) This is open to all my friends local and international. However it is not open to those who live with me.. sorry Dk and Karen you're both out of luck.

To enter all you have to do is:

      1. Follow my blog
      2. Leave a comment

I will choose a winner via Random.org on Monday April 9. I will give the winner one (1) week to contact me. If they don't I'll choose another winner. Please contact me. The last winner didn't and I had to choose someone else, not good for the winner but very good for Jenn, the second winner. :D

Happy Birthday Lily Pad, here's to many many more!!

Katie

Edit (The drawing has closed your welcome to keep commenting though. The winners can be found here.)